Two things make public WiFi feel bad, and they are not the same thing.
- One person takes all the speed. This is a sharing problem.
- Calls stutter while someone else downloads. This is a delay problem. Even with plenty of speed, the connection feels laggy.
ISN Free WiFi has a separate setting for each.
Fair Share bandwidth
This decides who gets how much. Once two or more guests are connected to a router, its real capacity is divided evenly among whoever is online right now, and it is recalculated about once a minute. With two guests on, each can use roughly half the line. When a tenth guest joins, it re-splits into ten shares automatically.
It only ever pulls a speed down toward the fair share. It never lifts anyone above what their plan allows, and guests who are uncapped, for example while watching an ad to unlock access, are left alone. When the router has room again, the reduction is released automatically.
Smart Queue Management (call quality)
This decides how traffic waits its turn. A big download can clog the line so everything feels slow, which is called bufferbloat. Smart Queue Management shares the connection by how much each individual connection is using, moment to moment. A voice or video call uses very little, so it keeps flowing smoothly even while someone else downloads something large. It doesn't guess which app is a call, which is why it keeps working when apps change.
The difference in one line: Fair Share is about fairness between people. Smart Queue Management is about smoothness for everyone. Together they keep a busy venue usable.
Both are set per router, from the router's own settings in the dashboard. Fair Share is off until you turn it on. For Smart Queue Management, you enter the line speed at about 90 to 95 percent of the router's measured speed. They work on OpenWRT-family routers, and on MikroTik and UniFi for the call-quality side.
Learn more: https://isnfreewifi.co.za/docs/network